All valve phono stage

[anga]

I'm after a valve phono stage, something along the lines of that offered by Icon Audio, they say that their all valve phono stage, with valve rectified/regulated power supply is the bees knees!!!

Will the valved power supply make that much difference, and if so does anyone know of any available plans for an all valved phono stage and power supply???

I'm guessing that they although they say a valve power supply, if they use DC heater supplies this must be diode rectified??

 

[kevinkr]

Here is a link to my latest design which you might or might not find of interest: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/analogue-source/213769-muscovite-6s3p-tube-phonostage.html Tube rectification and regulation, solid state regulated filament supply.

Here is a good one from Salas: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/analogue-source/140635-valve-itch-phono.html No reason why you could not design a tube based supply for this one...

And another from SY: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/diya...oise-thoroughly-modern-tube-phono-preamp.html Read this article regardless of what you decide to build.

Yes, filament supplies practically speaking would have to use SS rectifiers, and I recommend a good voltage regulator to make sure the supply is really quiet - nothing worse than ripply DC IMO..

Good luck!

 

[vinylkid58]

And get a copy of "Valve Amplifiers" by Morgan Jones while you're at it.

jeff

 

[lcsaszar]

May I have a related question? I regulate each of six tubes' heaters separately by 7806 voltage stabilizers in my phono preamplifier. It is quiet, no hum at all. But I heard that the 78xx doesn't really make good sound. Would it make sense to replace them to something better, like LM317? Or just use a diode bridge and a huge reservoir capacitor?

 

[anga]

I have had another search of the net and found the schematics for the Audionote L3 phono stage, with a valve power supply but using a Zener diode. Would this be worth considering building?? How difficult would it be changing the diode to a valve?? I'm not technically minded when it comes to electronic design unfortunately!!!!

 

[SY]

And get a copy of "Valve Amplifiers" by Morgan Jones while you're at it.

anga, this is the best advice you've been given. Trying to build a poor Chinese knockoff of a poor Japanese design is probably not the best approach. Truly understanding the design and "getting" how it's engineered will greatly increase the likelihood of satisfaction as well as increasing your own knowledge.

 

[anga]

I do have a 1996 edition of valve amplifiers by Morgan Jones which I started reading sometime ago but a lot of it went over my head to be honest. My Hi-Fi plan is to hopefully build the complete system myself, but for now I still want to listen to some music. Some aspects like the fully valved power supply are only briefly mentioned in the Morgan Jones book, if there are any other books worth buying then please let me know. I notice that Morgan Jones seems to not be too much of a fan of full valve power supplies so maybe there are other books that look at this in more detail. What I was hoping to find was plans for a good full valve phono stage that I could build and know it would work to upgrade from the SS stage I have. Once I have built a few items and read up some more on valves then hopefully I could start playing around with some of my own creations, but at least I'd have something to listen to in the meantime!!! Anything I build would be made from premium components and all hard wired, no chinese knock off pcbs, etc

 

[SY]

The later editions have much more information- worth a go. Morgan often uses tube rectifiers, but solid state regulation for reasons that he details. He does show some elaborate tube regulators, but is quite honest that their performance is vastly inferior to a good, simple solid state unit. If you design your circuit properly (i.e., high power supply rejection), the regulator type becomes much less meaningful.